


Shadow of a Dream

by chiiyo86



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Dreamsharing, Kissing, M/M, Post-The Blood of Olympus (Heroes of Olympus), Shadow Travel (Percy Jackson)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2020-05-07 07:27:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19204696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiiyo86/pseuds/chiiyo86
Summary: Nico's shadow-travel power misfires and he gets stuck in the shadow, his only link to the outside being his ability to reach other people's dreams.





	Shadow of a Dream

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Percico Summer Event 2019 in answer to the prompt 'shadows.' Enjoy!

_You’re an idiot. Stupid, stupid, stupid._

Nico has overdone it. Will told him that it would take a while before his powers were back to normal after his crazy shadow-travel race across the world, carrying along Reyna, Coach Hedge, and the massive statue of _Athena Parthenos_. Will said that it would take several months and that it was better to not shadow-travel at all, but Nico had been feeling so much better, so much stronger, and he’d thought that he knew his own limits better than a son of Apollo. Well, his arrogance has spectacularly backfired on him. He didn’t have any trouble fading into the shadows, and the familiarity of it was a relief, like a murmured ‘ _welcome back_ ,’ soothing to his senses. The problem is that he hasn’t managed to get _out_. He’s stuck.

All shadows are part of the same substance. There’s only one darkness, which is how creatures of the Underworld, like Nico himself, can use it to travel. This is what Nico explained to Percy a long time ago, back when the smitten part of him wanted to impress Percy with the cool things he’d recently discovered he could do. Nico is very familiar with the shadow space—or shadow road, however you want to call it—or at least that’s what he thought before. He’s starting to realize that through shadow-travel he’s only ever gotten a glimpse of it. Just a fleeting impression of coolness as he rushed through it, a few ominous whispers. He’s never lingered there. He _is_ lingering now, and he understands that he actually knows very little about a place he’s gone through so often.

He can’t see anything, although that isn’t surprising. He’s been swallowed by the darkness and he stands at the heart of it, where no light can’t touch him. The darkness is so thick that he gets hit by severe bouts of vertigo, because he can’t tell up from down, doesn’t know if he’s standing or lying down or hanging by his feet surrounded by nothing. The vertigo is so bad that it makes him puke a few times until all he has left to spit are trickles of bile that burn on their way out. He doesn’t know what happens to the vomit, but small mercies being what they are, at least it dissolves in the darkness and doesn’t leave a smell or gross bits behind it.

It’s also cold in the shadow. Nico doesn’t fear the cold much; he’s used to it from shadow-travel and regular trips to the Underworld. That’s why his skin is cool most of the time. Nevertheless, the shadow’s cold starts to get to him after a while. It seeps into him, down to his bone marrow. His fingers and feet are the first to get numb, but it eventually spreads to the rest of him until Nico feels like his body is a corpse that he has to lug around. He doesn’t know if he can get frostbite from the shadow cold, but he doesn’t care to find out. He needs to find a way out of here.

Except that it’s easier said than done. Usually, when he shadow-travels, he focuses on his destination before melting into the shadows. Whether he reaches it has been pretty hit-or-miss in the past, but at least he always gets out somewhere. He never has to consciously think about getting out, so he doesn’t know what to do when the shadow doesn’t just split apart in front of him as it always does. So he walks, hoping he’ll find some kind of exit. Past the first few terrible moments of vertigo and puking, he’s found out that he _is_ standing on something, even if he can’t see what it is. With some experimenting he’s now able to tell that he does seem to be walking on some kind of path—if he feels his way a few feet on his right and a few feet on his left, his foot sinks down into nothing. The feeling is heart-stopping and he needs a few moments to collect himself after that discovery. He doesn’t dare move at first, terrified that he’ll accidentally leave the path and fall down to… To where, exactly? To the Underworld? To _Tartarus_? He’s not very eager to land there again. He remains paralyzed for the gods know how long, but he eventually shakes himself into action. He’s not going to find a way out if he just stands there like a moron. If he falls down to Tartarus, well—he’s been there before. He survived the place, so he can probably survive it again. As he walks for a little longer, he discovers that his feet never let him stray off the path. Instinct is guiding him, probably the same instinct that has allowed him to run down that path before without even realizing what a misstep would mean. 

He doesn’t know how long he walks, but he’s starting to suspect that time doesn’t pass here quite as it does outside of the shadow. It _feels_ like a long time, but he doesn’t get hungry, despite having thrown up all the food that was left in him, doesn’t get thirsty and doesn’t get tired from walking. The only things he feels is the cold, and a sort of tedious mental weariness that makes it hard to focus as he keeps walking and walking without finding anything that looks like an exit. The exhaustion, even though it’s not completely physical, still ends up becoming too much and he has to take a break. He sits down cautiously, worried that the shadow path won’t support his butt as well as his feet, but it feels solid enough under him that he’s able to relax a fraction. Without meaning to, he falls asleep. 

He sleeps and starts dreaming. The dreams come as a reprieve—there is light, color, movement, and he doesn’t know how long he’s been stuck in the shadow but he could cry from how much he’s missed all of it. At first, he just lets himself float through disjointed dream sequences. One moment he is at Camp Half-Blood sitting by the campfire, then he’s fighting through legions of skeletons, then he’s at the beach, watching waves crash down at his feet. Only then does it occur to him that this is his chance to send out a SOS. He knows how to navigate dreams, and if he can get someone’s attention in their dreams, then at least they can help him find his way out. 

A surge of hope swelling in his chest, Nico conjures in his mind the image of his sister Hazel, focusing on it and calling for her with his thoughts. The dreamscape generally appears to him as a greyish land where colored spots signal the presence of dreamers. But today he remains stuck in his own dream, even after focusing so long and so hard on Hazel that his head starts to ache. Dread dries out his mouth. Is he completely cut off from the outside, unable to reach anyone? He tries calling for other people, his pulse racing—Reyna, Jason, Coach Hedge, Chiron. He tries Will, Frank, Thalia, Leo, Piper and even Annabeth. Finally, when everything else has failed, he tries for Percy. _Answer me, gods damn it!_

Nothing works. His own dreams morph again and Nico finds himself in Tartarus, walking the blistered skin of the dark god under a pustular sky. _No, no, no. I’m not there. Wake up. Wake up, Nico!_ With a gasp, Nico wakes up to impenetrable darkness, escaping a nightmare to end up in another. There isn’t much else to do but stand up and resume walking, but his inability to reach anyone through his dreams has dealt him a hard blow. It’s difficult to keep his spirits up while walking alone through the dark with no sense of a beginning or an end to the path he’s treading. 

After a while, though—impossible to say how long, of course—he starts having the feeling that he isn’t quite alone in the shadow. He’s heard noises and felt movement when he’s shadow-traveled in the past, but he was always through too quickly to make sense of it. This time, he hears a growl before he feels something massive rush past him. He loses his balance, gets turned around and stumbles a few steps, until his foot meets nothing and he scrambles back hurriedly on the path. 

“What in Tartarus was that?” he murmured, a hand on his chest, feeling his heart thrum under his palm. 

He says it out loud more to hear the sound of his own voice than because he’s really wondering. The growl sounded distinctively like it came from a hellhound—and it makes sense, really. He isn’t the only one using the road; he’s just the only one doing it on foot. He gets almost overrun by more shadow-travel users as he continues his journey. He hears growls and howls, teeth snapping, whispers, feels threads of cold brush against his skin. Sometimes he swears that he can see the darkness flicker with something not-dark, a flutter of silver. Nico doesn’t know if spirits can use the shadow road, but that’s what it feels like. In a way, all the strange noises and sensations are almost a comfort to him. At least it breaks the mind-numbing monotony of never-ending darkness that he experienced before, and he’s not scared of ghosts or creatures of the Underworld. This kind of spooky stuff is his domain, after all. The only problem is that they don’t seem to care one bit if they throw him off the path as they shove past him. He doesn’t know if leaving the path would mean falling to Tartarus or maybe falling forever, but neither option is appealing.

So the next time he gets too worn out to keep walking, he takes a leap of faith and actually lies down on the path, acting on the theory that there are less chances for the shadow-travelers to knock him over that way. It would probably be safer not to sleep at all, especially since he’s not sure he really needs it, but he wants to try dreaming again. Maybe it was just that none of his friends were sleeping last time, since he has no way to tell day apart from night. He has to try again.

This time, he leaves his own dream immediately, focusing on Hazel. He feels a tug at the pit of his stomach and gets dragged along through bleary dreamscape to a spot of color that feels Hazel-like—warm and bright, smelling like jasmine. He melts into it and finds himself in front of Pluto’s shrine at Camp Jupiter, built into the side of Temple Hill. He can see Hazel at the entrance of the shrine, another Nico standing right next to her. Hazel is dreaming about him—this shouldn’t make him feel a mix of warm and embarrassed, but he can’t help it. Sometimes he has a hard time fathoming that other people think about him when he’s not there. 

“Hazel!” he calls, hoping she won’t get confused by a second Nico popping up in her dream. Hazel’s affinity to death isn’t as strong as his, so she isn’t as good at dream control. 

Just when he is about to call for her one more time, he feels a disorienting twist and pull. The décor around him gets warped, as though seen through curved glass, and in the blink of an eye his perspective has changed. He’s now standing with Hazel at the entrance of the shrine. She’s holding his wrist, one step in front of him and angled as though she’s trying to shield him from something. Whatever is going on in her dream, it looks like she’s trying to _protect_ him. The thought makes Nico’s face grow hot for some reason; it’s sweet, but he doesn’t need anyone’s protection. And _he_ is the big brother out of the two of them, although ages are a complicated matter for them both. 

She is talking to him, but not like she’s realized that the real Nico has switched places with his dream copy. “—I don’t think the rabbit can get us here. Father’s aura is protecting us.”

Rabbits? Hazel is dreaming about protecting him from _rabbits_? Nico bites his tongue not to laugh; there are more pressing matters than making fun of Hazel’s weird dreams.

“Hazel,” he says. “Hey, Hazel.”

“Do you think the others are safe? I don’t think the rabbits will go after them, but I’m not sure that putting on that carrot costume was very inspired on Percy’s part—”

“Hazel!” Nico tugs on her arm to get her attention. “Listen to me, I—”

There’s a popping sound, like a bubble bursting, and Nico’s surroundings fall apart like shattered glass.

“No! No, no, no, Hazel, please, it’s me, it’s Nico, and I’m stuck in—”

Camp Jupiter, Pluto’s shrine and Nico’s sister have disappeared, leaving him alone in the wavering greyness of the dreamscape.

“Shit.” Nico stomps his foot on the not-ground in frustration, then tries a few more curse words for good measure. “Fuck. Damn it. Kronos’ balls. Tartarus’ smelly armpit!”

Hazel must have woken up. Maybe he’s startled her, or she was awakened by something in the real world. Whatever happened, she is out of Nico’s reach right now. He has to try someone else; if Hazel was sleeping, then others must be sleeping too. Nico goes through his mental list of everyone he knows who would be willing to help him, but it’s like repeatedly hitting his head on a stone wall and hoping the wall will crumble. At least, until Nico thinks about Reyna and feels the same tug he felt with Hazel earlier. He lets himself be pulled into the bright blob of Reyna’s dream, the colors twirling until they settle into the image of a clearing edged by woods. Nico immediately sees Reyna and Coach Hedge, standing next to each other. They’re both staring in the same direction, their faces frozen in horror. Nico follows their look and sees a dark silhouette planted in the middle of a patch of dead, blackened ground.

It’s him. It actually takes him an embarrassing amount of time to recognize himself. Part of it is that he doesn’t look in mirrors all that often, but it’s also because that dream version of him looks like a piece of nightmare. He’s pale and gaunt, dark circles around his eyes, wild strands of black hair falling into his eyes, looking disturbingly like one of the skeletons he summons. He knows that he looked pretty bad during that journey, as he burned himself out so they could get the _Athena Parthenos_ in time to Camp Half-Blood, but it’s still a shock to see just how bad. His hands don’t look like hands anymore but like shadowed outlines of hands—again, a consequence of him overusing his powers. This isn’t the terrifying part, though. The air around the other Nico is icy, making a wispy white cloud out of his breath. Where the ground isn’t just barren black earth, the grass is glistening with frost. Bryce Lawrence, the Roman legacy of Orcus who’s just attacked them, is buried up to his waist in the ground and clawing at it, trying in vain to stop the rest of his body from being sucked in. His face is white and his eyes wide with panic. He’s yelling incoherent pleas for help or mercy. 

“ _You’re already dead. You’re a ghost with no tongue, no memory. You won’t be sharing any secret._ ”

 _Gods in Olympus._ This is _him_ talking. Nico doesn’t recognize his own voice at all. Not just because no one knows what they sound like from the outside unless they hear themselves recorded, but because it barely sounds human. It’s a dark whisper, almost a rasp, cold as a grave and hollow as a skeleton’s ribcage. Nico feels bile rise up in his throat. He can’t keep looking at himself and at what he knows he’s about to do, and neither can he stand Reyna and Coach Hedge’s horrified expressions. He closes his eyes and shakes his head. _Snap out of it. Wake up. Wake up!_

Nico opens his eyes to dark nothing. He’s still lying down flat on his back on the shadow road, which means that he hasn’t been shoved off the road by a careless monster cruising by. That is one silver lining at least.

He sits up and buries his face in his hands. He’s trembling, his breathing ragged and uncontrolled. He doesn’t know how much of his shaking is the cold, and how much is the shock of what he’s just witnessed. He barely remembers any of it, but Reyna and Coach Hedge told him the whole story; they didn’t even sugarcoat it much from what he can tell, but hearing about it and seeing it in an out-body experience are two different things. He knows that he can get scary, but he hadn’t realized how scary. Seeing that nightmarish version of himself isn’t even the worst part. No, what feels awful is the look on Reyna and Coach Hedge’s faces, and the fact that this was Reyna’s dream. This was so traumatizing for her that she’s still dreaming about it. Does she think about it every time she sees him? Only some of the time? She has never said anything that would make Nico think that she does, but then she isn’t the type to share her fears. 

Eventually, Nico is able to stop his hands from quivering and gets his breathing under control. He tries to force some positive thinking into his brain. It isn’t something that comes naturally to him, but he has a hunch that if he loses it in this place, then he’ll have no hope of escaping it. The darkness will eat him whole and not leave anything behind. If Reyna hated him, he tells himself, then she wouldn’t have stuck around for three days after that whole turn-Bryce-into-a-ghost disaster, trying to save Nico’s life. This had put their mission in jeopardy and she had done it anyway. She also hugged him in front of a gathering of Roman and Greek campers. It might have been a political move, a way to promote friendship between the two camps, but she wouldn’t have used Nico for it if she’d truly been disgusted by him. It's possible to mostly like someone and have mixed feelings about certain aspects of them. It doesn’t mean that she isn’t really his friend.

Once he has put his thoughts into some sort of order, he tries to analyze his situation. Walking doesn’t seem to be doing him any good, but dreaming was marginally better than last time, all things considered. He managed to get into Hazel and Reyna’s dreams, and even if various circumstances meant that he couldn’t talk to them, at least it’s still in the realm of possible. Head in his hands, Nico thinks again about Hazel and Reyna’s dreams. They had one thing in common: Nico was in them. The girls were both dreaming about him and he felt the same tug from their dreams. Does it mean that from where he is, he can only access the dreams of someone who’s dreaming about him? Well, this is going to seriously limit his chances, but he has to keep trying.

Going back to sleep when he’s still feeling agitated is hard. Nico lies on his back for what feels like forever, listening to the intermittent growling from the occasional traveling hellhound and feeling the rush of air over him. He focuses on his breathing, on the rhythmic ebb and flow of _in, out, in, out._ He detaches his mind from what he’s seen in Reyna’s dream and from his current situation. This is fine. He’s at home here, in the heart of the shadow. Nothing bad can happen to him. 

He finds the dreamscape again and doesn’t waste any time before calling with his thoughts onto his list of acquaintances. He goes through the names in his mind. _Reyna, Jason, Coach Hedge, Chiron, Will, Frank, Thalia, Leo, Piper, Annabeth, Percy._ He feels the now familiar tug, new hope barring with wariness at what he’s going to find—someone dreaming about him doesn’t mean that it’s anything good, but it’s his only chance so he has to take it.

He knows that he’s in Percy’s dream from the smell of salty air and seaweed, before he even sees the ocean and the beach that stretches as far as the eye can see. He contains a snort, thinking ‘ _typical Percy.’_ It makes him feel better about the dream, because it can’t be too bad if Percy’s mind is setting it in his favorite sort of place. Nico sweeps a look around, trying to locate Percy in the dream. The beach is mostly empty except for one—no, _two_ people. One of them is Percy, and he’s draped over someone who is lying on the sand. Nico quickly looks away, his cheeks burning. From the position and the sounds he can hear, it doesn’t take a genius to guess that Percy and the other person are making out. It’s almost worse than Reyna’s nightmare. Nico hasn’t seen enough to identify the person with Percy, but it doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s Annabeth, even though from what Nico has heard, Percy and Annabeth broke up recently—since Nico doesn’t know much about it, it’s possible that Annabeth was the one to break up with Percy and that he’s still hung up on her. In any case, it’s not any of Nico’s business. He’s intruding on Percy’s—on his _sex_ dream, and it’s wrong. Even when Nico had a crush on Percy, it wouldn’t have been right for him to see something so private. Styx, it would probably have been even _more_ wrong, but slightly less wrong doesn’t make it right. 

But even if Nico knows that he shouldn’t be here, he can’t make himself snap out of the dream. He’s burned through two chances to ask someone for help, and he doesn’t delude himself into thinking that people dream about him all the time. If he doesn’t try to talk to Percy, then he might as well resign himself to staying trapped on the shadow road for so long that it might as well be forever. Not to mention… where _is_ he? Unless his theory is wrong, then he’s been drawn to Percy’s dream because Percy is dreaming about him. Is dream Nico hiding somewhere on the beach, watching Percy making out with someone like a peeping tom? Is that how Percy sees him, now that he knows that Nico used to have a crush on him? They haven’t really talked about it, because once the crazy impulse that had made him blurt out his confession had passed, Nico had been way too embarrassed to want to discuss it. Percy has tried to talk to him a few times but Nico has always brushed him off. So he doesn’t know how Percy feels about Nico being gay, or about the fact that he was sort of Nico’s sexual awakening. 

_Do something. Either get out of the dream or try to talk to him._ Nico forces himself to look over at where Percy is, about twenty feet away from him. Percy’s body is still covering most of the other person, but Nico can tell that this isn’t Annabeth, because he can see the top of a head and it isn’t blond. It’s dark. The glimpses he gets of the other body are definitely not female—this a male torso, pale and skinny, and these are a boy’s black swimming shorts. 

Nico’s stomach flip-flops and his heart beats in his throat. Even though he’s lucid and invading someone else’s dream, he weirdly feels like he’s the one dreaming. His surroundings are too bright, the colors too vivid, and the scene in front of him is… It’s not real, he knows that. But he can’t wrap his mind around the fact that it’s happening outside of his own head. By the time Percy levers himself up on his arms and Nico can see his own face, he’s had enough hints that it doesn’t come as a complete shock. Still, he can’t believe what he’s seeing. Percy is not just dreaming about him; he’s dreaming about _kissing_ him. 

If his cheeks were hot before, his entire face is now aflame. From what happened in Hazel’s dream, he knows that if he tries talking to Percy, he’ll switch places with the dream Nico that Percy is currently making out with. Back when Nico was crushing hard on Percy, the thought would have made him combust on the spot. Now that he’s over him, it’s still immensely embarrassing, but he _has_ to try. He doesn’t think he can take much more of infinite darkness before it threatens his sanity.

Nico takes a deep breath and then slowly releases it, trying to get his thundering heart under control. “Hey, Percy,” he says out loud, challengingly.

His perspective flips dizzyingly, making everything around him blurry for a second, and then he is on his back, hot sand burning the naked skin of his back, blinding blue sky over him, and a solid, moving body on top of his. Percy’s lips are warm and wet, and tastes like salt. His chest contracts and expands under Nico’s hands. Tendrils of his hair tickles Nico’s face. Nico can’t think, can’t breathe properly, his body feeling prickly and foreign, too many sensations at once after the numbness from the shadow realm. Percy sucks on Nico’s lower lip and Nico’s breathing hitches, a moan building in his throat.

 _You have to stop this. Stop him. This isn’t what you’re here for._ The thought is a slap to Nico’s face. He slips his hands between himself and Percy, and with a surge of energy, gives Percy a hard shove. Percy yelps and topples backward, ending up on his butt. He blinks owlishly, gaping at Nico. 

“What got into you?” he asks, sounding bewildered. 

Nico shuffles away from him, trying to put a safe distance between them. It’s a struggle to regain his composure. Crush or no crush, Percy is still a good-looking guy, who is presently half-naked and was lying on top of Nico only a moment ago, kissing him enthusiastically. 

With a little distance, he manages to get back his bearings within a few seconds. “Percy, it’s me,” he says firmly.

“Um, okay. You’re you. That’s good, I guess.”

“You’re dreaming.”

“I—what?”

“Look around you. Do you even know where you are? Do you remember what you were doing before? Why we were—” Nico feels himself blush hard, unable to finish his sentence.

“Of course I know, I—I was…” Percy’s mouth opens and closes like a goldfish blowing bubbles. Everything around them—the blue sky, the golden beach and the green sea—is getting hazy, the details becoming smudged.

“Percy,” Nico says urgently. “Stay with me. Don’t wake up. Stay in the dream, Percy!” 

“Hades,” Percy swears, his face pale under his summer tan. He leans back on his hands and takes a deep breath, looking up at the sky for a moment. “I’m dreaming. Okay. But you—?”

“I’m real. I’m not part of your dream. I’m asleep somewhere else and I’m visiting.”

“Oh, gods.” Percy draws his knees to his chest and hides his face against them. “Can I die now, please? Is that an option? Or maybe you can open the earth and I’ll jump right into the crack.”

Nico doesn’t know what to say, how to react to their old dynamics being flipped around. An awkward silence settles between them like a third person. Dream seagulls cry out in the distance.

“Do you have that sort of dream often?” he asks, the words out of his mouth before he can stop himself. 

Percy’s red face emerges from behind his knees. “I wouldn’t say it happens _often_ , but—It’s not the first time. I, uh. I don’t know. Breaking up with Annabeth, it’s made me thing about a lot of, uh, stuff. And that thing you told me… I know you don’t feel that way about me anymore. I guess I’m just—”

“Curious?” Nico says, feeling strangely bitter. Percy questioning his sexuality doesn’t concern him at all, so he should have no reason to feel anything about it. Although it does concern him a little, since Percy was dreaming about kissing _him_.

“Maybe? I guess so,” Percy says with a shrug. “I’ve had other dreams—about Luke Castellan, for example. But most of the time it’s, um, it’s about you. Sorry.”

Nico can’t look at Percy anymore, so instead he looks at his fingers tracing lines in the sand. “Don’t be sorry. Your dreams are a private thing. I’m the one who’s intruding.”

“Yeah, what’s that about? What are you doing in my dream?”

“I’m trapped. I tried shadow-travel and, well. I guess I wasn’t up to it, and now I’m stuck.”

“Stuck? What do you mean?”

“You remember how I told you that there’s only one darkness? When I shadow-travel, I go through it to get to other places. In and out, like using a tunnel. Well, this time I went in, but I can’t get out. I don’t know how long I’ve been gone in the outside world, but for me it feels like a long time.” Maybe he’s been missing for days and everyone is so used to him vanishing that they don’t wonder about it. He tries to ignore that thought.

“So you’re stuck in the shadows? Wow. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. At least I think I am. For now. I realized I could only find the dreams of people who were dreaming about me. So, um.” Nico clears his throat. “Here I am.”

He hears the sound of crunching sand as Percy gets closer to him. He looks up and meets Percy’s concerned green eyes. “What can I do to help?” Percy asks. 

He sounds so earnest that it makes Nico’s chest ache. Finally talking to someone, even if the circumstances are very awkward, is such a relief that for a moment he’s afraid he’s going to bawl. Swallowing hard, he says, “I’m not sure. I usually don’t have to think about getting out. I just _do_.”

“Okay.” Percy crosses his legs, elbows resting on his knees. “Let’s think about this for a second. What do you do, when you shadow-travel? I mean, normally.”

“I don’t know. How do _you_ manipulate water? It’s just instinct.”

“Yeah, but I remember that shadow-travel had a bit of a learning curve for you. You said you ended up in China a few times. What did you learn to do better?”

“I…” Nico rubs his temple as he thinks it over. It’s a strain to stay here in Percy’s dream and he can tell that he’s going to wake up soon. “Some of it is stamina—the more I used my powers, the less tired I was afterward. But also… The first few times I traveled, I didn’t have any clear destination in mind. I was just trying it out, and I ended up all over the place. It worked better once I started doing it knowing where I wanted to go. The more information I have about the specific location I’m aiming for, the better it is. Like, if it’s somewhere I’ve been before, then it’s fine. If I just decide to go to the Eiffel Tower in Paris, then it’s a throw of the dice. Distance is also a factor, but more on how tired I will be from the travel.”

“Okay, so you need to focus on your exit point. That makes sense. Where were you trying to go?”

“Camp Jupiter. I’ve been there tons of times. It shouldn’t have been a problem.”

“Can you aim for a person?”

“What?”

“Have you ever tried to go where someone else was? Like, instead of thinking of a place, you think of a person and try to go to them, even if you don’t know where they are.”

“I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”

“I have an idea.” Percy suddenly leans forward and grabs Nico’s wrist. Nico bits back on a cry of protest, wary to see where Percy is going with this. “If your problem is that you’re not anchored properly to the material world, then I could be your anchor. We’re here together in the dream. You focus on me, I’ll focus on you, and I’ll try to pull you out with me when I wake up.”

“No, wait.” Nico twists his hand awkwardly to close his fingers around Percy’s wrist. “What if you wake up and it doesn’t work? Then I’ll be—”

“I’ll go to Chiron and ask him for help. I’ll work on finding a way. And if I need to talk to you again, I’ll fall asleep thinking about you. I’m not giving up on you, Nico. You don’t have to worry about that.”

“Okay.” Nico takes a long, slow breath. His heart is pounding hard again, slamming against his ribs. “I’m ready.”

“Yeah, um. I’m not sure exactly what—” Percy takes Nico’s other wrist, his fingers sun-warm against Nico’s chilled skin. He smiles sheepishly. “Sorry. I’m trying to cover all the bases.”

“It’s fine,” Nico says, but he sounds a little rough.

“Okay. Okay. I’m doing it.” Percy closes his eyes and murmurs to himself. “Wake up, Percy. Come on, come on.”

Their surroundings melt away, the colors mixing like paint on an artist’s color palette. Nico’s breathing is getting unsteady with panic. If he wakes up again in the shadow, he doesn’t know what—

The world collapses. Something yanks his arms so hard that his shoulders scream in pain. He tumbles out into nothing and he falls, falls, falls, his stomach doing loops, the skin on his face fastened against his skull by the speed. It feels like forever but it comes to an abrupt end when something slams into him. The breath is kicked out of his lungs. His head spinning, he remains prostrate on the hard surface he’s landed on. It’s dark, wherever he is, and his stomach sinks at the thought that he’s back there, that Percy has failed, that he’ll never be able to get out.

“Nico! Are you all right?” This is Percy’s voice. If Percy is there, then Nico can’t be still stuck in the shadow. _Thank the gods_.

Nico pushes himself up on shaky arms, or at least he tries to. When his arms falter, he feels hands on his shoulders and hears Percy’s voice in his ear, “Take it easy. Here, let me just—Come on, sit down on the bed.”

Once his eyes have had time to acclimate themselves, Nico can see that it’s not completely dark where he is, not like it was in the shadow. Yellowish street light filters into the room through the blind’s horizontal slats, and Nico can make out a desk and a chair, a bed, and Percy himself, sitting next to him with an arm thrown across his shoulders. As if he’s just become aware of it when Nico did, Percy drops his arm and shifts away from Nico.

“Sorry,” he says. “Are you feeling okay?”

Nico’s body feels like it has caught up with being real again in a matter of seconds. He’s dizzy, so exhausted he can barely hold his head up, thirsty and oh so hungry, to the point that it feels close to nausea. But he’s out, so it’s all right. With some rest and food he’ll be okay.

“I’m fine,” he says.

“Okay,” Percy says, although he sounds doubtful. “Do you need anything? I can—”

He’s standing up as he speaks, but Nico catches his arm and holds him back. Percy makes a questioning sound, obviously waiting for Nico to tell him what he needs. The problem is that Nico doesn’t know. He has felt many things for Percy over the years: awe, confused attraction, disappointment, hatred, resentment, frustration. Love—maybe he’s too young to know about love, but he’s almost sure that he’s felt it. It has almost crushed him. So it was a relief when he thought that his feelings had finally quieted down. That Percy was now just like any other guy for him. Seeing himself be kissed by Percy in a dream, _feeling_ it, has been a total mind-trip, and Nico hates that he can’t get it out of his head.

“What is it?” Percy insists gently, shaking his arm a little to emphasize his question. Nico’s fingers rest in the crook of his elbow and his skin feels so _warm_ that it makes Nico shiver. 

“I just—I want to check—” 

Before his nerves get the best of him, Nico leans in and kisses Percy on the mouth. It makes his lips tingle and his chest flutter with a strange sort of pain. Percy sucks a sharp breath in, and at the sound Nico pulls away, mortification washing over him. What is he _doing_? Percy kissing him in a dream doesn’t mean that he wants to do it in real life. He was probably just curious—he actually _said_ that he was just curious. 

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. I’ll just—” He tries to get on his feet, unclear on what he’ll do once he’s managed an upright position, but this time Percy is the one holding him down.

“Wait, Nico. Wait. Where are you going? You’re not going to shadow-travel, are you?”

“I’m not _stupid_ ,” Nico says bitingly.

“I know you’re not, but you look upset. Listen.” Percy sighs heavily. “I don’t know why you—why you kissed me. I’m feeling super confused right now.”

“I’m confused too,” Nico mumbles, looking down at his knees. 

“Yeah.” The sound of Percy’s weary laugh does things to Nico’s stomach. “At least we can agree on that. We’re not going to decide anything right now. You’re exhausted, I’d like to go back to sleep too. But for what it’s worth I’m not opposed to, you know—something happening between us. Or to nothing happening at all. Just, don’t be a stranger, okay?”

“Yeah. Okay.”

“What do you need right now? Sleep or food? Water?”

“Food and water, please. Then sleep.”

“I’ll be right back. You can lie down on my bed. You look like you’re about to collapse.” Percy reaches out, and his hand hovers for a moment over Nico’s shoulder before he gives it a squeeze. “We’ll talk more in the morning, if you’re feeling up to it.”

Nico tries to manifest his assent, but his body is shutting down fast. His eyelids are drooping, his body listing to the side. He lies down on Percy’s bed and feels like he’s sinking into the mattress. He would say that he’s never been so tired, but the sad thing about his life is that he has, several times. 

He means to stay awake until Percy comes back with food, but he can’t resist the pull of sleep. The darkness that envelops him is warm and comforting.

**Author's Note:**

> This turned out very Nico-centric... I'm sorry that Percy didn't show up until half-way through the fic! Hope you liked it anyway. :)


End file.
